UV Letters

Three years ago, following the fourth ASU-GSV Summit (the first to move off campus to the Phoenician), the UV Letter explained why our little industry get-together was like the classic John Hughes film The Breakfast Club. Fast forward three years, our get-together is a little more star-studded...

Based on the response to the last UV Letter, there appears to be some enthusiasm for more stories from law school. Here's my favorite, also starring my brother Aaron.
Aaron's a big guy (6'4") with an even bigger heart. Back in law school, he was intensely aware...

Elder siblings are supposed to set a good example for younger siblings. But as I've observed with my three boys, if a younger sibling copies the elder's behavior too closely, it likely ends in fisticuffs.

What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas. While this may be a catchy marketing slogan for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, I haven't been able to adhere to it. I keep writing about Vegas, from my first visit a quarter century ago, to a more recent...

I left my home in Canada to live in the United States, drawn by America's great universities and by a belief that free markets were preferable to Canadian monopolies on sales of beer and donuts. So one thing that continues to puzzle me is how universities in the land of the free manage to keep pricing virtually all degree programs the same.

The first movie I attended without a parent was Gung Ho! The comedy starred Michael Keaton (Mr. Mom) and Gedde Watanabe (the wacky Japanese kid from Sixteen Candles) and portrayed a Japanese automaker taking over an American assembly plant.

I grew up in Toronto in the oldest house on my block. In the 19th century it had been the farm house, well beyond the overly polite Canadian hustle and bustle. One day in fifth grade I was home after school eating a snack in the kitchen when I heard what sounded like my violin playing upstairs. This was weird because I thought I was alone, home before my siblings or nanny. I raced upstairs to my room in the attic and flipped on the light in the creepy closet which was the venue of most of my nightmares. My violin was out of its case on the floor, the bow leaning improbably against the strings. I ran downstairs and confirmed that no one else was home. Or at least, no other human.

Over the holiday I took my family on a road trip. Like most drivers trying to make time, we took the Interstate for the most part. Then somewhere around Barstow, CA we got off the highway and drove old Route 66. Route 66 ran from Chicago to L.A. and took millions of Americans east and (mostly) west from the 1920s until the 1970s. One of the first American...

Last year I began using Twitter with the impression that it made content shorter, more digestible. Then tech venture capitalist/bon vivant Marc Andreessen invented the tweetstorm. Andreessen's multipart Twitter rants - sequencing each tweet with 1/ 2/ 3/ and so on - inundate his 450k+ followers several times each day and inspire tweetstorms from others which Andreessen gladly retweets in order. All of which raise a fundamental question: can't Andreessen afford a blog?

One of my favorite old Saturday Night Live characters is Don Novello's Father Guido Sarducci, the chain-smoking priest. While his Find the Pope in the Pizza skit was genius, his best was the Five-Minute University.